In Manhood Factories, Paula Lupkin has continued the popular study of late nineteenth-century masculinity through space and identity, but here she has the added nuance that the architecture of buildings is at the forefront of her study, rather than people. She explores how the strict style and unwavering conformity of YMCA buildings across America, in the period between the Civil War and World War I, produces a model of urban man in a newly industrial national entity. I think a weakness of this approach is that rather than revealing the history of how people really used the YMCA buildings, Lupkin is instead presenting the history of how those buildings were designed to be used. There is no room in this study for the subversion of moral codes or the misuse of facilities. Lupkin does address the changing use and purpose of the YMCA over time, but this is still from the perspective of what was seen as good, strong and respectable, rather than what was real.
Lupkin immediately identifies the great economic and social changes after 1865, which led to a re-evaluation of masculine boundaries and opportunities. A white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant man had less opportunity to ascend to a state of economic independence: instead he fitted onto a predetermined rung of the national industrial economy ladder, that he helped to build. The intrinsic availability of a YMCA building performed the function of anchoring men to a moral code and a hierarchy which was reminiscent of the traditional agrarian Puritanism that they had left behind, but created as a normal part of the corporate and capitalist urban city for the future. This was achieved by the instantly recognizable architecture, and increasingly nationwide role as a private, homosocial urban space. The book shows how the carefully imagined, constructed and myth-infused spaces of the YMCA building attempted to cater for the range of Christian men in these changing times, from the Christian manliness of self-control, charity and paternal responsibility in the 1870s, in evidence at Madison Square in New York, through to the entertainment and social investments or gymnasiums and swimming pools of twentieth-century man, ‘muscular Christianity’ embodied in their steel-framed skyscrapers in Chicago. By the turn of the century, the YMCA was flexible enough to be ‘retooled’ by its members, as well as shaping them, so as not to lose relevance and authority. This relevance was becoming a concern by this stage – mass culture and a great rise in urban economy meant that the YMCA had to compete with less morally legitimate ways of enjoying the city. ‘Manhood Factories’ used more secular terms like ‘auditorium’, and the lion's share of space was set aside for athleticism – bowling alleys, swimming pool, locker rooms, baths and showers, a gymnasium, an indoor running track, and tennis courts.
The book tracks this ability to change with generous space for images of posters, plans, photographs and propaganda. Typical across America, the YMCA's buildings, posters and the people became symbols for the late nineteenth-century backlash against the idea that religion was feminine. ‘Muscular Christianity's’ blend of religion, sport and masculinity became a central element of the American urban landscape, and a shared masculine characteristic across a newly incorporated nation, transcending ethnic, religious, and state barriers. Additionally, this became a way to unite men who had become disillusioned with the ‘national manhood’ identity of the beginnings of the United States, owing to their fighting other American men in the recent Civil War. Here they could unite, assert their masculine faith and exhibit their difference from the imagined other, who were (supposed to be) embodying ‘feminine’ religious traits by settling subordinately into the YWCA buildings.
Lupkin would be missing a large part of the YMCA's history if she did not address the issue of the link between the YMCA and homosexuality in the city. Even a study that looks at homosocial spaces in the late nineteenth century and how these made modern culture, without focusing on an institution so loaded as the YMCA, would be incomplete without reference to homosexuality. Unfortunately, Lupkin makes only very fleeting mention of homosexuality; this is quite surprising in an otherwise detailed book about the effects of the building on the men, and the men on the building. Even a brief study of the subversive homosexuality in these buildings, designed precisely for concentrated male-only activities, would have provided a realistic counterpoint to the mythical condition that the YMCA had created of homogeneous, virile, heteronormative society.
The final chapter outlines the evangelical mission behind the spread of the YMCA across America and the world, with the plan to ‘put a similar structure on every Main Street in the USA’. This chapter touches on resistance from people outside the big American cities such as Chicago, due to the impositions that the YMCA were attempting to make on their Christian evangelism, but also to their architectural technique. Here we see examples of why the uniform style of YMCA buildings became a deterrent for communities to embrace the culture. The standard buildings were also suffering from becoming obsolete in design and use as ‘modern’ building techniques and social desires were coming fast and strong. Despite this, YMCA buildings in urban areas increased threefold between 1900 and 1906, and continued to increase up until World War I. This trend followed an international building campaign. China in particular took up the YMCA's model of buildings for young men as these principles fitted with the well-practised dogma of China's imperial civil service. Again, however, the book explores China's top-down adoption of the YMCA, rather than the way young Chinese men actually used the buildings.
Manhood Factories is an interesting study of masculinity from the perspective of building design and imagined perceptions. The book makes good use of illustrations, maps and photographs to augment points about the introduction and spread of YMCA architecture and ideals through the USA, the west and China. It fails to counterpoint these points with an exploration of how men and women actually used the spaces of YMCA architecture for the making of modern masculine cultures and the modern culture of the YMCA.
